Introducing SeenYourVideo.com, Your Essential Guide To Cool Music Videos

As you probably know if you’ve read this blog for a while, I have a huge passion for music videos. I’ve scratched the surface on here with my annual Best Videos Of The Year posts and occasional video posts, but I’ve always wanted more, and now I’ve finally gone and done something about it. Today, I’m launching Seen Your Video (credit to The Replacements for the name), a brand new blog dedicated to posting cool music videos.

I’ve long felt like there’s been a void on the Internet in music video-focused blogs. Sure, there’s plenty of blogs that post videos, but I find it’s usually focused on the artist / song and not necessarily the quality of the video. I consider myself as much of a film geek as a music geek, so stuff like interesting narrative, beautiful cinematography, and originality matters to me.

At Seen Your Video, we’ll only post the stuff that stands out from the pack and we’ll also let you know why the video is worth your time. If that sounds like something that’s up your alley, then visit us, add us to your bookmarks, subscribe to our feed and maybe help us spread the word too.

MP3 The Replacements – Seen Your Video

Soundsupply

Supply Drop #1 Trailer from Soundsupply on Vimeo.

This morning’s aimless web browsing led to the discovery of Soundsupply, a bundle of 10 digital albums available for $15 for a limited time. As fans of previous bundle methods, it’s interesting to see this approach applied to music. It’s a relatively cheap and painless way to discover something that might have otherwise flown under your radar, or maybe give something a chance you otherwise wouldn’t.

Of course, Soundsupply would not be as enticing if the albums offered weren’t so good. For one low price you get albums from Jason Schwartzman’s Coconut Records, Someone Still Loves Your Boris Yeltsin, Merrill Garbus and Patrick Gregorie’s Sister Suvi, and ukelele songstress Sophie Madeline. The video above will give you a taste of everything the bundle has to offer. It’s an appealing idea and one worthy of support, and it will be exciting to see Soundsupply’s next move. We’re already anxiously awaiting the next drop.

"Who the he'll is that fire who?" and other twitter reactions to Arcade Fire's Grammy win.

Since there’s no hope in me trying to post about anything else today, here’s some of my favorite twitter reactions of last night’s triumphant, beyond-shocking album of the year win by Arcade Fire at the Grammys. These are mostly gathered from my own twitter feed or the WhoIsArcadeFire tumblr. Also in the awesome mind-blowing news category, Radiohead announced a new album this morning to be released this Saturday (!!!). Read all about it here.

MP3 Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

I have an iPad, The Lodger, XX and other newsflashes

Thanks to my wife Celeste and her staff appreciation dinner, as of three days ago we are now proud owners of the coolest door prize imaginable, an iPad, which as you can imagine has been consuming much of my time this week (I’ll start posting more frequently soon, I promise). Although I consider myself an early adopter and heavy tech user (Apple products especially), I hadn’t anticipated getting this device anytime in the near future. Now that we have one, though, I don’t think I can live without it. It’s already completely changed how I browse the internet / check email and I actually look forward to reading the newspaper every day now which is something I could never say before. Here’s my 10 favorite apps so far on the iPad.

Netflix (watch movies on the go)
USA Today (very colorful, great layout, navigation)
Harbor Master HD (most addicting game ever)
Alice in Wonderland (for showing off the graphics / interactive capabilities)
iBooks (So far I have Sh*t My Dad Says, The Wire: Truth Be Told, and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter)
ABC Player (for my LOST fix)
Magic Piano (really cool, uniquely designed piano app)
Twitterrific (I’m used to Echofon and Tweetie, but this one’s growing on me)
Maps (for pretending you’re a CNN anchor)
Peggle (iPhone version but works fantastically on iPad)

Also, have to mention the WordPress app which I’m using to write this very post!

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With all the great leaks in the past couple of weeks, it’s been hard to listen to anything that isn’t called High Violet, This Is Happening, Together, Heaven Is Whenever, or Forgiveness Rock Record. But I did get the chance to check out the a couple tracks from The Lodger’s upcoming album, Flashbacks. The Lodger is one of the UK’s catchiest guitar pop bands (“The Good Old Days” was one of 2008’s best jams) and their new stuff looks like it’s just as fun and jangly. I especially love the 60’s soul-influenced horn section and the cheerful boy/girl harmonies in “Have A Little Faith In People”. You can purchase Flashbacks soon from This Is Fake DIY Records.

MP3 The Lodger – Have A Little Faith In People
MP3 The Lodger – The Back Of My Mind

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I really enjoyed this video for The xx’s “Islands” directed by Saam Farahmand which premiered on my friends at mtvU. Really cool concept and the ending is brilliant.

Speaking of The xx, I’ll be posting my review of their Chicago show with Hot Chip early next week. You can check out the photos early at the musicforants.com flickr page.

MP3 The xx – Islands

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I’m super glad that Thursday TV is back, the Goodfellas / Godfather parody on Community made for probably the funniest episode of the night, but my favorite clip had to be this one from 30 Rock:

Happy Birthday, Bitches!

Nerve.com: Five Albums + other newsflashes

I recently curated an article called Five Albums You Should Be Listening To Right Now which was posted today on relationship / culture webzine, Nerve.com. I think it’s awesome to be featured on a website where currently the most popular article is called The Top 43 Sexiest US Presidents. Anyways, if you’ve been following this blog the last few months you should already be familiar with the albums listed, but if you’re interested you can click here to read what I have to say. Some relevant MP3s below.

MP3 Surfer Blood – Swim (To Reach The End)
MP3 Shearwater – Castaways
MP3 Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work

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Hey did everyone hear about the new Zoolander sequel? Ben Stiller just confirmed the news and it looks like Hansel will definitely be a part of the movie (and maybe even Mugatu). And Justin Theroux, the evil DJ in the original, is writing / directing. Let’s just hope it goes better then last time he tried to direct a movie!

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OK Go‘s new video for “This Too Shall Pass” is incredible. And due to their sponsorship from State Farm (full disclosure: I work for those guys), you can embed the video anywhere. Like right below these words here. Months of work went into making the Rube Goldberg machine (read how it was done here) for this video and it really shows.

Newsflashes (Hold Steady / New P's / Buffetlibre / LOST)

The Hold Steady have sadly parted ways with their keyboardist / accordionist Franz Nicolay. We will all miss his awesome mustache and vaudevillian fashion sense, and I hope the band gets someone else to play those sweet piano licks very soon. Looking forward though, on the last leg of the Stay Positive tour, the band debuted a slew of new tracks with names like “Gideon’s Conversion”, “Sharp Cross”, “(Ballad of the) Midnight Hauler”, “Separate Vacations”, “Our Whole Lives” “Heaven is Whenever”, and “Going On a Hike”. Here’s some amateur video recordings of a couple of new songs, which both sound really good.

Y2B Hold Steady – (Ballad of the) Midnight Hauler
Y2B Hold Steady – Heaven Is Whenever
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Everyone’s favorite Canadian supergroup, New Pornographers just announced a new album out this year and not only are all the principles, A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, and Neko Case on board, but they also have some rounded up some awesome guest contributors: Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Zach Condon (Beirut), and Will Sheff (Okkervil River). The album’s scheduled to drop on May 4th. Also, the album art (seen above) isn’t so baffling this time around!

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I usually try to stay away from remixes, but considering that I quite enjoyed Buffetlibre‘s take on Patrick Wolf’s “Who Will” from last year, I was overjoyed when they sent me a new remix of one of my favorite songs of the last few year’s “Two” by The Antlers. It’s a very cool take on the song, I really like these guys style and you have to applaud their willingness to tackle songs that aren’t obviously remix-suited. Check both out below.

MP3 The Antlers – Two (Buffetlibre Remix)
MP3 Patrick Wolf – Who Will? (Buffetlibre Remix)

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With LOST starting up again on February 2nd you can expect a lot of blogging / theorizing on what it all means. I got to give it up to The Onion for making this hilarious video ode to LOST addicts like myself and the people that have to live with them.

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If you like newsy updates and random thoughts like this, you can track me on twitter.

Newsflashes (E3, Antlers, God Help The Girl, Conan, etc)

I’ve been keeping up with Joystiq’s amazing E3 coverage over the last week, mostly to keep tabs on the new and wonderful developments in the music gaming world coming up. Guitar Hero 5 released an artist list which features much more indie rock and overall song variety than ever before (Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, White Stripes, TV on the Radio, Blur, My Morning Jacket, and even Elliott Smith are in the game). Plus, some of the new features of the game (like party play) look sick. This interview has all the info.  Rock Band: Beatles (view trailer, intro), of course, looks crazy awesome. Haven’t decided on DJ Hero yet, though my gut tells me that will be really cool as well, but my gut is also very hungry…

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A lot has happened for Brooklyn’s The Antlers since I featured them in January. They’ve exploded on the blog scene, signed to Frenchkiss Records, scored a tour with Frightened Rabbit, and started to get some major attention from Pitchfork.  Not only did they get best new music for their song “Bear” but today they were officially added to Pitchfork Festival which is totally sweet. Their album will be re-released in August, listen to two of their best tracks below:

MP3 The Antlers – Two
MP3 The Antlers – Bear

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If you’re as big of a fan of The Wire as I am, you’ll probably want to spend some time checking out this blog, dedicated to the show and other David Simon projects.  They’re systematically going through and analyzing each episode and keeping count of things like Omar stick-ups and drunken McNulty sightings.

MP3 Tom Waits – Down In The Hole

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I’m still regularly listening to Stuart Murdoch’s God Help The Girl album. Not every track works for me, but the good ones (like “come monday night”, “a dark and dusky blonde” and the title track) are really really great.  If you’re a Belle & Sebastian fan and miss Murdoch on lead vocals though, here’s a just-released b-side MP3 that’s been made available to download. Very enjoyable song.

MP3 God Help The Girl – Mary’s Market

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Check out this blog that exposes duplications and other interesting photoshop fakeries in movie posters. Totally rad!

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I’ve caught every episode of the Tonight Show with Conan, and I love what the man is doing. So far, the Tom Hanks episode has been the best, I laughed my face off at TWITTER TRACKER.  This image has been making the rounds but I feel obligated to post it, because it’s seriously cool:

If you like newsy updates and random thoughts like this, you can track me on twitter.

Newsflashes (Sufjan, Album Leaks, Matt McConaughey, more)

Sufjan Stevens released a old demo track that was inspired by Sofia Coppola on his blog, and explains a bit of his songwriting process.  If you’re a Sufjan fan (or borderline obsessive, like me) it’s pretty much required reading / listening.  The track is not half bad, it’s very simple and quaint, just him and a banjo.  The melody is quite nice; it wouldn’t sound out of place at all on one of his Christmas EPs. Could a new album be in the near future? Please be so.

MP3 Sufjan Stevens – Sofia’s Song

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For those of you dirty pirate types, there’s a lot to celebrate. Stuart Murdoch’s solo project, God Help The Girl leaked as did the first of two Patrick Wolf albums to be released this year, The Bachelor, and the Iron & Wine compilation, Around The Well. I, happily, have a lot of listening to do this weekend.

I’ve listened to God Help the Girl a bit and it’s quite amazing how well Stuart captured the 60’s folk/pop feel with these songs. The jury’s still out though on how much lasting appeal this album will have. Elsewhere, Connor at i guess i’m floating is all over the new Patrick Wolf grab “Hard Times” and read some of his initial thoughts here.

MP3 God Help The Girl – Come Monday Night

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Cracked.com is really on a roll lately, they’ve really perfected the art of list-based, photoshop-enhanced humor.  Here’s one of my recent favorites: Matthew McConaughey’s Next 10 Movie Posters. It’s funny because it’s oh, so true.

Example: Pro Boxer Ed James thought he was ready to fight Vampire Jones, but wasn’t ready for… was falling in love. Matthew McConaughey in Down for the Count.

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I find the whole Flaming Lips controversy over “Do You Realize??” being named Oklahoma’s official rock song pretty hilarious. Reading the blog comments of the curmodgeony Oklahoman’s who haven’t heard of / can’t stand for The Flaming Lips’ antics are pretty great.  Here’s an interesting news story on the matter from newsok.com, scroll down for the comment wars.

MP3 Flaming Lips – Do You Realize??

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Obligatory 30 Rock reference: “Blue writing on green … why?!?”

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If you haven’t been checking out my other writing gig at mtvu.com then you should! Yes, I have to dumb some stuff down for the mass MTV audience, but I also feel pretty proud of some of these articles I’ve written.  Here’s links to my most recent writings:

Silversun Pickups – Panic Switch (video premiere)
Asobi Seksu – Me & Mary
Chairlift – Evident Utensil
The-Dream – Rockin’ That Thing (Remix)
Fanfarlo – Harold T. Wilkins
School of Seven Bells – Half Asleep
Death Cab for Cutie – Grapevine Fires

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Follow me on twitter! You might find I occasionally have interesting things to say in 140 character increments.

Newsflashes (Wilco, Flaming Lips, Wild Things, more)

New album details for Wilco and Sunset Rubdown.  Wilco’s still untitled album has a tentative tracklist now with some familiar tunes like “Wilco, the song” (as seen on Colbert) and “One Wing” (as seen at Lollapalooza). Also there’s a duet with Feist. The album’s due out in June. At this point, this is my most anticipated album of the year. Here’s the above two songs plus another new one in glorious live MP3 (courtesy of Picasso).

MP3 Wilco – Wilco (the song)
MP3 Wilco – One Wing
MP3 Wilco – Sunny Feeling

Sunset Rubdown’s new album will also be released in June, is titled Dragonslayer, and will feature “Idiot Heart” (as heard on Daytrotter) and the sequel to Trumpet Trumpet, “You Go On Ahead” (as seen played in a black cab). Judging from those two songs this album will be great.

MP3 Sunset Rubdown – Idiot Heart (Live @ Daytrotter)

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The Flaming Lips (who coincidentally, also have a new album out in June) were added to Pitchfork Music Festival. Really psyched to see the band again in a festival environment, hopefully it will become a summer tradition. Sucks about the write-the-setlist redux being canceled though.

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Where The Wild Things Are trailer. You’re probably sick of reading about this by now, but I also was blown away by the Where The Wild Things trailer.  From the preview, I’m thinking this could be a contender for best film of the year.  Here’s an MP3 of the alternate, shortened version of “Wake Up” that was used in the trailer (Thanks Mel).

MP3 Arcade Fire – Wake Up (Alternate Version)

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From all reports, Rural Alberta Advantage killed it at SXSW.  I’ve been reading lots of great reviews all around, and couldn’t be happier for the band, who’ve I’ve been championing on here for a while.  Check out the coverage at You Ain’t No Picasso, Paste, Chromewaves, and Pitchfork (hopefully they’ll get around to reviewing the album soon also).

MP3 Rural Alberta Advantage – Don’t Haunt This Place

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The last 30 Rock episode was possibly the funniest ever.  Absolute genius.  Anytime Dennis returns the show is on the top of it’s game.  The Liz in muppet-vision walk, Tracy as an astronaut, and the 1900-OKFACE had me lizzing and jacking.  This show is giving Arrested Development a run for it’s money and I don’t say that lightly. Quotes:

“If you have a spaceship and you’re looking for a hilarious astronaut with an irregular heartbeat and $30 million, I am prepared to leave as soon as tomorrow. I wrote that yesterday.”

“One word: coffee. One problem: Where do you get it?”

“What is this, Horseville? Because I’m surrounded by a bunch of naysayers. Word play!”

“I’m aware of it. I have a Google news alert for the phrase ‘Tracy Jordan ridiculous disaster.”

“Good luck with your fake addiction and your inconveniently located vending machines.”

Newsflashes (Phoenix, Hold Steady, and more)

News, notes, tidbits, that I have on my mind this week.

Phoenix

In addition a ridicuously cool album title, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and some Royal Tenebaums looking promo art, French art-rockers Phoenix now have a release date (March 25) and a new single called “1901”.  From the looks of things, this will be no doubt be one of the albums of the year. The new song absolutely slays.  The band is still catchy as hell, and “1901” is refreshingly new wave and danceable. Loving those buzzy synths. This song has been repeating for a while and I don’t see it stopping in the near future.  Classic stuff.

MP3 1901

Pitchfork 500

I’ve been slowly going through Pitchfork 500 reading and listening, thanks to a friend burning the entire 500 on a dvd for me (Thanks Blake!).  So far, like most of Pitchfork, there’s some really great reviews and music on here and a few choices that lead to a giant “huh?”. It’s been awesome for digging up some undiscovered (by me) classics and generally expanding my music knowledge.  Here’s a couple songs I found through the book that I now can not live without.

MP3 Billy Bragg – A New England
MP3 The Records – Starry Eyes

The Hold Steady

Here’s the trailer for The Hold Steady’s new live DVD / rock doc, “A Positive Rage”.  It was filmed in Chicago a couple years back at the Metro, which I am still regretting missing.  I am happy, though, that I’ll now be able to experience the show vicariously.

MP3 Chips Ahoy!

Also, talking about live DVDs, I just got Jeff Tweedy’s “Sunken Treasure” and it’s so freakin’ good.

TV Update

-That little cornballer, Michael Cera has agreed to do the Arrested Development movie.  George Michael fans rejoice! What a fun, sexy time for all of us.

-I just finished the third season of The Wire, which is easily one of the best season closings I’ve ever seen on a show. The conclusion of the Avon Barksdale / Stringer Bell storyline absolutely killed.

-I’ve started on Mad Men, Season 1. Great show so far.